Reclaiming the Loch Ness Monster from the current tide of debunking and scepticism. If you believe there is something strange in Loch Ness, read on.

Thursday, 23 April 2015

A 1934 Picture of Nessie?

My apologies first of all for not blogging this picture sooner. I have been sitting on this for months ever since I photocopied the newspaper article in Glasgow (I don't think the story is available online). Fellow cryptozoologist, Scott Mardis, came across a very cropped version of the picture during his research which prompted me into action.

The picture was taken on the 10th June 1934, but the identity of the photographer is not known. My excuse for delaying was to go to Loch Ness to line up the hill contours to establish the general location, but I will assume it was taken at Loch Ness near Fort Augustus. The account of how the picture was taken was also printed (see below and click to enlarge).

However, the picture is not new to the general Nessie literature. Peter Costello, in his 1974 book, In Search of Lake Monsters, reproduces a drawing of the picture. Based on the shallowness of the hump, he does not assign great evidential value to it.

Roy Mackal also mentions it without reproducing it in his book, The Monsters of Loch Ness, and, like Costello, consigns it to the inconclusive category. Maurice Burton also includes it in his sceptical book, The Elusive Monster, as does Witchell in his The Loch Ness Story, but none show the photograph. Today is your chance to see the original article.

Looking at the picture itself, it is not of great quality and there may even be retouching going on by the picture staff (a practise that was applied across all manner of newspaper photographs in those days). However, the sea serpent researcher, A. C. Oudemans, had reproduced the picture in a 1934 dutch article (below) which improves the quality but is cropped in extremis. Certainly, this picture shows the object to be a dark object consistent with the witness description (as a side note, I have been intending to translate this article for months, bear with me).

If this is a picture of the Loch Ness Monster, then we are looking at it in its double hump aspect. The problem is the relative shallowness of the hump which opens it up to sceptical interpretations of boat wakes. The photograph below taken over forty years ago by the Loch Ness Investigation gives you some idea of the problem.

We have also have the controversy over bow wave pictures in the recent David Elder video and again the shallowness of the phenomena opens it up to such interpretations.

If you believe there is a large creature in Loch Ness, then it is reasonable to expect shallow hump photos. In my own view, the creature is a water breather and so any breaking of the surface is largely accidental and there is no instinctive behaviour behind it. So how does one distinguish a barely breaking hump from a bow wave?

Well, there is one way to quantify this and that is to calculate the height to length ratio of the phenomenon in the given image. Applying this to our various images above we get the following numbers (I have added error estimates since uncertainty is part and parcel of such investigations).

Daily Express 0.05 +/- 0.006

LNI wake 0.034 +/- 0.006

Elder picture 0.031 +/- 0.006

It is to be noted that the 1934 object is 47% greater in its ratio than the next highest. Obviously, this is not an exhaustive list, but the question has to be asked, how high can this ratio be for natural bow waves? If the object in question goes above such a limit, do we discard bow waves as an explanation in this case? At this point in time, the best number is 0.034 for the LNI wake.

Another point which tends to argue against a bow wave is the fact that there seems to be no other waves in the picture. You will note that the two example pictures of wakes display this extended nature, but there is not so much indication of this in the Express picture. The caveat to be applied there is that the quality of the picture mitigates against a full analysis.

So what is it? A bow wave or something else? If somebody can find a bow wave picture with a ratio that approaches the Daily Express object, leave a comment below.

POSTSCRIPT: One possible location for the photograph may correspond to the view below which was taken two or three miles out of Fort Augustus on the A82.

Hello GB. If I saw this photo without any explanations attached, I'd assume it was an island or a sandbar. In clicking to the enlarged full pic at top, there is a big difference between it and the photos of bow waves you've posted:

The mass is pretty well truncated at either end/side, while the photos of bow waves show elongating, diminishing parts of the wave on either side/end of the highest part of the wave.

In the 1934 photo, the mass elongates slightly on the right side, diminishing in height before disappearing to the loch's surface. If it were a bow wave, the diminishing elongation should continue out much further than that, judging by your other bow wave photos. And on the left side of the mass in the 1934 photo, the mass is utterly truncated, with no continuation or height or elongation at all. It dips and stops abruptly.

If the mass in the 1934 photo had diminishing elongations on each side of it, as the masses in your bow wave photos have, it would be easier to think it's a bow wave. Since it doesn't, the only similarity to it and the bow wave photos, is between the 1934 mass, and the highest middle sections of the bow waves.

Going by the full-sized photo, due to the lack of wave elongations on either side of the bulk, it looks like a sandbar or some other solid mass. I see mention of sandbars in Loch Morar, but anyway the witness said it surfaced, swam a few yards, and submerged, making it too lively to be the average sandbar.

That is a common sight on any lake. It is a wave in an elongated ribbon-like shape that appears to twist as one would twist the opposite ends of a ribbon in different directions. Seen them hundreds of times. Any fisherman, boater, water skier will tell you the same thing.

I have jusr had a nose on the lake monsters facebook page. What a load of old twaddle lmao and they have the cheek to slate this page pmsl im suprised at some of the ones that take cheap shots at you Roland i would of thought they knew better. It sums them up really that they spend time writing in that old twaddle pmpl. your blog is far betfer and more researched, keep up the good work Roland

Having looked into bow waves after reading this article, I can now see why so many people have reported single and double humps on Loch Ness. What I previously regarded as solid anecdotal evidence now looks rather more shaky. Another part of the Nessie puzzle falls into place. For this reader anyway.

Possibly, but en masse all the various natural phenomena could account for almost all sightings. The rest could be down to excitability and hoaxes. There may literally be no genuine monster sightings at all among the long list. A sobering conclusion from my perspective. For years I thought there had to be something in it. Now I'm thinking why does there have to be?

This is a subjective area of Loch Ness Monster research which pretty much lies in the eye of the beholder.

I don't think all sightings can be explained in sceptical terms. Others just assign the "difficult" reports to over excited or decpetive witnesses as you say. I think that is too easy to do, but I leave readers to read the blog and form their own opinion.